"Something is the matter. I am sure something is the matter," she murmured, deeply interested.
Jessie allowed her work to fall upon her knees, whence it slid to the ground. Her pretty little short face, neatly rounded and rosily coloured, became altogether absorbed in what was going on across the road.
"I'll have that window blocked up some day,—see if I don't,—the bottom half of it," burst out Miss Perkins. "That's what I'll do."
Jessie had perhaps heard the threat before. "But where's the hurry?" she asked. "I've heaps of time, aunt Barbara. You said yourself I shouldn't need those night-dresses till next winter; and March isn't out yet. Just hear the wind! What a howl! I wish I was out in it . . . Something has happened somewhere, I'm quite sure. Mr. Mokes is all in a taking. And there's Mr. Gilbert, and a sailor,—I think it's Robins,—and—and there's Ben too."
Jessie's face grew more pink. Not that she cared a brass farthing for Ben Mokes; but he was one of her admirers, and she did care for admiration.
"Ben Mokes is as idle and useless a young spendthrift as ever lived," commented Miss Perkins. "I wonder at his parents for letting him go on as he does. I wouldn't! I'd make him work, or I'd send him about his business. Old Mokes just slaves, and Alice Mokes like another; and Ben don't do a single hand's turn that he isn't obliged. But there! They've spoilt him all through, and they've got to reap as they've sowed. He'll come to no good, nor nobody else that he has to do with."
This outburst seemed to amuse Jessie immensely. She had to bite her lips to keep in laughter.
"Poor Ben! Oh, he's well enough, aunt Barbara. He isn't handsome, and he's awfully lazy and rather stupid, but I don't see how he can help that. People can't help being stupid when they are made so. Can they?"
Miss Perkins did not feel herself competent to answer this question. It involved too much. She sewed in a persistent and combative fashion, the droop at the end of her thin pinched nose very near indeed to her needle. Perhaps her sight had begun to fail a little, for she was well over fifty; besides, it was uncommonly dark and dull for only half-past four o'clock on an afternoon in the end of March. Twice she looked round with indignant protest at the window, as if somehow it were to blame.
"I can't possibly see to work any more. I couldn't if you paid me for it," Jessie observed. "I'll wait till we have lights, or till it gets clearer. It's hours too early for lights yet. I don't see the good of sitting here doing nothing . . . Aunt Barbara, there is something wrong, and I'm going to see what it is. Don't hinder me. I must go."